Dear Jean,
I think you might be remembering Cowley's remarks about Spenser -- there
is something (affectionate) about The Faerie Queene as nursery literature
there (See Wells, Spenser Allusions in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, Studies in Philology, Texts and Studies, 68-9 (1971-2), 260).
Best wishes,
Bart van Es
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>From: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: your mail
>Date: Fri, Oct 10, 2003, 1:38 am
>
> Dear Jean Goodrich (et al.),
>
> I can't help much with your attempt to track down 'matter of the nursery,'
> but having spent a good
> deal of time with the Spenser / Harvey letters, I'm not sure what Harvey
> meant by the 'Hobgoblin'
> phrase but I doubt that he was suggesting Spenser was writing childishly,
> or for children. Quite
> possibly, some later critic put that spin on the allusion to Hobgoblin:
> either to fault what he took to
> be Harvey's misreading, or to enlist the learned man on his side in a
> criticism of Spenser. In the
> 1580 correspondence, there's some obscure connection between 'Hobgoblin'
> and 'Hobbinol,'
> and as in the 'Calender' to which the letters form a pendant, Harvey /
> Hobbinol and Spenser /
> Colin are doing an elaborate dance fraught with rivalry, affection,
> insecurity, all of it in a campy
> sort of masquerade, juggling open secrets and empty secrets.
>
> Cheers, Jon Quitslund (Geo. Washington U., emeritus)
>> Dear Spenserians,
>>
>> I know that early on, Gabriel Harvey dismissed Spenser's "faerie project"
>> as "Hobgoblin runne away with the garland of Apollo." However, is anyone
>> familiar with a criticism that Spenser's topic was the "matter of the
>> nursery," (paraphrase) either by Harvey or a later critic (like C.S. Lewis)?
>>
>> I know I've read this somewhere, and I'd like to relocate the source. Alas,
>> I am too young to be having "senior moments"... 8^)
>>
>> Thanks for your help,
>>
>>
>> Jean Goodrich
>> English Department
>> University of Arizona
>> Tucson, AZ USA
>
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